


Truths Half Told

by gabolange



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-25
Updated: 2010-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 03:56:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabolange/pseuds/gabolange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A necessary argument.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truths Half Told

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately post-"Rapture."

He finds her on his couch when he enters his quarters, and it surprises him only slightly. It is a conciliatory gesture on her part, a sign of trust if not weakness. She has tucked her feet up under her, and he wonders in what corner he will later find her shoes. Marvels just a little at her gumption, waltzing in, resting barefoot in his quarters, believing in his ability to temper his own anger. He is not sure he has the same faith in himself.

He certainly does not have the same faith in her. Laura would put Baltar and the Cylon out an airlock without hesitation; he will not let her because he refuses to pick up the pieces of both her government and her soul at the same time. He knows what Saul has told him of her time on New Caprica, knows about prison, forced march to execution, refusal to permit suicide bombings, capitulation. It struck her to the core, if such a thing was possible.

After the cancer, after Billy, after what little he knows of her last days on Caprica, after Kobol, after Baltar, he feels that perhaps nothing can touch her. But her soul is fragile where her resolve is not, and after the election he appointed himself its guardian; he discovered later she had granted him the same favor. He doesn't know when.

She sits on the couch, resting her head in her hand. She flicks a finger in his direction as if to acknowledge his arrival or his thoughts and to summon him nearer. He can see the fatigue and anger in her face, in the lines he learned to read when she lay dying; she knows they must fight or risk—what? They will not divide the fleet; even in anger and the face of her ruthlessness, he supports her more than Zarek or Baltar or anyone else who might attempt to govern. The consequences of letting these wounds linger cut deeper than they would have in the first, tired year.

He crosses the room, loosening his uniform top as he moves toward the decanter that rests on his desk. He lifts it and waves it in her direction, but she declines the offer with another twitch of a finger. She knows—she must know, he hopes—that it is his own overture of peace. A shared acknowledgement that neither will leave this room without some measure of understanding.

The last of his ambrosia trickles into the glass. There is another bottle somewhere, but that is for a special occasion. Now he must content himself with the remainder, and the alcohol burns as he lifts the glass to his lips and sips.

He settles the glass back on his desk. "You should've told me about the child," he says.

"Hm." She rubs her forehead, and he watches her fingers. There is no part of her that is not expressive in some way, and he has learned her headaches from the way she holds her hands. She drops her hand to her lap, and nods slightly, smiles ever so softly. "No," she says.

It is the answer he expected, of course. She made the decision, and stood by it, and lied about it. She stands by it. She must. What comfort he finds in knowing her course of action is negated by his profound discomfort at that action itself. His anger. He puts a finger to the top of his glass and traces the condensation. Looks away from her.

She shifts her hand from her head and rests her arm on the couch, cocking her head to look at him squarely. "Hera needed to be protected at all costs," she continues, her voice brittle. "I couldn't take that risk."

"It wasn't your risk to take," he says, and thinks of the anguish he saw in Helo and Sharon's eyes, anguish he could reflect a thousand fold if only he blinked. "You don't separate children from their—"

"I remind you that Sharon is a Cylon."

He knows where she is going with this, doesn't want to follow her rhetoric to its logical course, waits for her.

"Two years ago," she says, folding her hands in her lap to stop from jumping up, from yelling, he thinks. He has never seen her yell. "Sharon was a Cylon prisoner in a cell. You had no way to know she would become Sharon Agathon, savior of the fleet and small children." Her last words are dripping with unexpected sarcasm, and he tries to search her face for a clue as to her thoughts. He thinks he sees a ripple of annoyance, but he doesn't know at what: his failure to reprimand Helo more strongly, his failure to see her point, his failure to be her steadfast supporter.

He peers at her over his glasses. "Fine," he says. "Why not—."

"Kill her?" she asks, and if he wasn't listening carefully, he wouldn't have heard the note of hysteria under her practiced façade. She is capable of so much; he remembers the Olympic Carrier, the Leoben model, the Cylon virus, and he flinches. But she does not think herself capable of infanticide, even of a Human-Cylon hybrid. He wants to know how she justifies leaving Hera in unsafe hands, though it was not the question he intended. She continues on, saying softly, "That child is the face of things to come, Bill."

"Which means what?" he challenges, and this gulf is one they cannot cross. Her faith is hers alone, and though there are truths hidden in the depths of Pythia's prophecies, he prefers to treat them as historical coincidences rather than Gods-given axiom.

She smiles, and as her lips quirk up slightly, he wonders if she is structuring her response to provoke him. She could give the religious line, the one he often thinks she believes, the one she often believes, about the prophesied future of mankind. He would not accept it, but perhaps she enjoys making him uncomfortable.

"The Cylons believe it," she says instead. She turns to look him squarely in the eye, her gaze strong but not hostile. "You said it yourself, Bill. It doesn't matter if we believe." She pauses. "It doesn't matter."

It is a deflection, a whispered demand that he not press her on her beliefs; there are days she is Pythia reborn, the prophetess that will guide her flock to a promised land, just as there are days when she is the agnostic leader of mortal men. He has learned, for the most part, not to question her shifts of faith.

His fist clenches despite her demurral. He brings it to rest on his desk, a gesture of violence suppressed, one she cannot miss. Her eyes shift as her lips flatten, and he does not stiffen under her regard. "Ah," she says, and again moves to rest her head in her hand. "It would have been fine if I'd killed the child," she continues, and she has returned to the sarcastic lilt. "If only I'd told you."

If he could, he would say he cannot condone murder. But in his lifetime he has left his men to die, to be captured, to suffer. In his lifetime, he has made fatal mistakes that have led to tragedy. Perhaps he can condone murder, and if so, he hates himself for it, but he is not sure, still, he can condone falsehood. He has lied, of course, to many people. To his children, to his ex-wives. To his friends, his comrades, the men under his command. He has tried, a few times, to lie to Laura Roslin, and has failed because she saw right through the façades to the truths hidden beneath. But he cannot return the favor, and it is a broader failure than his lies.

Perhaps she can see this in his eyes, but he doesn't want to know. He says instead, "You took that child from its parents." His second hand forms a fist so he is leaning over his desk on his knuckles. "I can't just overlook that. You don't—." His voice breaks.

"Separate parents from their children." She knows his arguments before he voices them, probably before he thinks them. She knows him as he knows her, every move, every gesture.

He ignores her, banishing his sentimental thoughts. "I could permit that, granting extenuating circumstances." He takes a deep breath.

But she fills the silence. "No, you couldn't."

His fist crashes on the desk between them, and it is to her credit that she doesn't jump. He wants to make her flinch, make her jump, because he is tired of her rules, the quiet, duplicitous gestures that leave him reeling even as she gains his respect and his friendship and his love.

She does not flinch. "You think I don't understand that, Bill?" she says, leaning forward, uncrossing her legs and dropping her hand into her lap.

"You don't have children." He hears his voice drop as it always does when he thinks of his sons, one vibrant and alive and a thorn in his side and one who did not have to live through hell. He doesn't know if he's thankful for that. He isn't. Not today. "To lose a child is--." He stops.

There is silence between them as he stress at his fists, and she stares serenely across the room to where he stands. She sits back, rubbing at her temple, and he hears the leather creak as she shifts. He takes a deep breath, is ready to continue, but she interrupts him.

"You don't have a monopoly on loss, Bill." Her voice is so quiet, so soft, and he turns his head to see that she has set her jaw and that her eyes blaze.

"Billy was different." The words are out of his mouth before he can stop them, and he sees the hurt flash in her eyes before everything that was Laura in her posture is suddenly masked by the very angry President of the remains of the Twelve Colonies of Kobol. The shift is subtle, but dynamic.

She unfolds herself from the couch and crosses her arms over her chest. She should not look so imposing in her stocking feet and a rumpled skirt, but he closes his eyes against the vision. Wants to apologize, can't. She doesn't understand.

"I'm not talking about Billy," she says. Her voice is cold, and he has heard that tone. "You think I--." She turns, putting her back to him and pulling her glasses from her face.

He turns to watch her, tries to catch her decision in the rise and fall of her shoulders as her breathing changes to reflect her thoughts. He cannot tell if she's going to capitulate or explain or simply order him to march out an airlock.

She shifts, and refolds her arms, tapping her glasses against her sleeve. "Billy was different," she says, sighing slightly. "And my father and sisters were different. And my mother." He wonders if she closes her eyes against the memory, but cannot see her face. "I watched my mother die, Admiral." The title is a rebuke. He started her down this path, forced her to recall these moments. She takes a breath, and if he did not know her so well, he would not hear that it shakes, but he does, and he wants to retract his fighting words. Isn't sure he wants to hear her story. "I held her as she was taken by the Gods. I was twenty-two years old."

He knows this about her, of course, from her dossier. He knows this because as he held her hand as she lay dying, she commented on how he had taken her place in so many ways. He knows it because one night, she told him about how she hates fireworks because the noise reminds her of what her father's last moments would have been like. But her stories were melancholy, not present, and he sees now that perhaps one masks, but does not supplant, the other.

He wonders how he talks about Zak. If he talks about Zak.

Now she turns and he can see her profile. Her face isn't marred by tears, and her jaw is still firmly set against the intrusion of personal thoughts or feelings. "You don't take children from their parents," she says. "And you don't take parents from their children."

Her mouth turns up in a small sigh. "But to protect the fleet from the Cylons? To protect the child from the Cylons?" she asks, and the question from anyone else might sound cynical. This time, she does close her eyes briefly, and his memory returns to Caprica, to joyous moments with a boy he wanted to know as a man, to Kara Thrace's hard, sad face as they stood together at his youngest son's funeral. "That child is the face of things to come, Bill." She takes another breath. "She needed to survive."

He wants to laugh, but chooses instead to look anywhere but her face. Her explanation is logical, correct, and so utterly wrong. "You didn't succeed," he says, and his comment is intentionally disingenuous. "The Cylons have her."

"Hera is alive," she says. "They want her to live." She faces him now, watching him watch the space over her shoulder. "She will live." And her voice is strong, as her faith is strong, and if he does not believe in the Gods, he believes in Laura Roslin. He hopes he never tells her, knows he will, some day.

He reverts to the old argument, saving face, saving breath. "You should have told me about the child." They are back where they started, have not quite come full circle, but are closer to their destination than before.

She quirks an eyebrow. "You wouldn't have permitted it, Bill. It needed to be done."

"Simple as that?" he says, shifting his gaze to her hands, now hanging at her sides.

"Yes." And her smile is so sad, because it is now entirely up to him to decide where to take this conversation. He could continue the fight, push her so she pushes back. She would win, as she almost always had before, but it would destroy them.

He thinks of Lee, of betrayal, of the dead of Caprica and New Caprica, of her losses and his, of children reborn, and he says, "Sharon and Helo don't know how lucky they are." He turns back to the desk and picks up the ambrosia that rests there, growing warm. He toys with the glass.

She nods slightly as he concedes the argument. "No," she says. "They don't." She moves toward him and plucks the glass from his hand, raising it to her lips and draining it in one large gulp. It is inelegant, but not unattractive, and he eyes her quizzically. "I doubt they'll ever forgive me," she says. She hands him the glass, arm outstretched. "But not you."

And there is her true explanation, couched in history and deception. He takes the glass from her and sets it on the table. "You don't have to protect me," he says.

Her smile is melancholy, but true. "Of course I do, Bill," she says. "I'm the president."

He glares at her a little, notices that her hand is still outstretched from handing the glass back. She wiggles her fingers, and he takes them in his hand as she moves back toward the couch. She falls back onto the leather, tugging him with her. He is not sure what she is doing, but goes willingly enough. It is flattering, almost, that she takes it upon herself to shield him from decisions she believes will harm his relationship with his crew. It might be flattering if she allowed him the same luxury.

They sit quietly for a moment, backing away from their angry words, before he is compelled to finish the conversation. "You asked me a question, earlier," he says. She looks at him slowly, brow creasing in confusion. He glances at her, before looking down at the hand he still holds in his grasp. "If we were willing to sacrifice Lee." She tightens her fingers around his, but does not respond, letting him continue, letting him think. In that moment, he could have done it. Could have reacted out of anger at the Cylons, at Baltar, at frakking Laura Roslin for being both unequivocally right about everything and yet so entirely wrong. He takes a steadying breath.

"After Kara's viper went down," he begins, waving his free hand to a time they both remember, before they knew or trusted each other, "I told Lee that if it had been him, we never would have left." His voice shakes with what he must admit. "But times change," he says, and turns to look sadly into her attentive face. "I could have done it. I could have killed them to keep the map to Earth from the Cylons."

Laura sits forward, pulling herself up so she sits shoulder to shoulder with him, and places her free hand over the one that still grasps her hand. She shakes her head, slightly, and he doesn't know if it is because she doesn't believe him or because she does. "I'm glad you didn't have to make that decision," she says.

"Yeah," he says. His son is alive, fighting with his conscience about morality and love in a battle that will never be fully resolved. He disentangles his fingers from Laura's and shifts to look at her directly. She shrugs slightly, and if all is not forgiven, it is forgotten in the face of mounting fatigue and a desire to put aside their public personas for just a moment. Without permission, she settles herself against him, closing her eyes against their argument and the day.

He carefully wraps his arm around her, and does not raise the countless decisions they face. The admiral instead presses a light kiss to the top of the president's forehead and sits back against the couch. In his last glance around the room, he locates her shoes lying beside the door.


End file.
